by Theodore Dreiser 43 страница

"You don't regret leaving that, do you, Frank?" asked Steger, curiously.

"I do not," replied Cowperwood. "It wasn't that I was thinking of. It

was just the appearance of it, that's all."

In another minute they were at the outer gate, where Cowperwood shook

the warden finally by the hand. Then entering a carriage outside the

large, impressive, Gothic entrance, the gates were locked behind them

and they were driven away.

"Well, there's an end of that, Frank," observed Steger, gayly; "that

will never bother you any more."

"Yes," replied Cowperwood. "It's worse to see it coming than going."

"It seems to me we ought to celebrate this occasion in some way,"

observed Walter Leigh. "It won't do just to take Frank home. Why don't

we all go down to Green's? That's a good idea."

"I'd rather not, if you don't mind," replied Cowperwood, feelingly.

"I'll get together with you all, later. Just now I'd like to go home and

change these clothes."

He was thinking of Aileen and his children and his mother and father and

of his whole future. Life was going to broaden out for him considerably

from now on, he was sure of it. He had learned so much about taking care

of himself in those thirteen months. He was going to see Aileen, and

find how she felt about things in general, and then he was going to

resume some such duties as he had had in his own concern, with Wingate &

Co. He was going to secure a seat on 'change again, through his friends;

and, to escape the effect of the prejudice of those who might not

care to do business with an ex-convict, he was going to act as general

outside man, and floor man on 'charge, for Wingate & Co. His practical

control of that could not be publicly proved. Now for some important

development in the market--some slump or something. He would show the

world whether he was a failure or not.

They let him down in front of his wife's little cottage, and he entered

briskly in the gathering gloom.

On September 18, 1873, at twelve-fifteen of a brilliant autumn day, in

the city of Philadelphia, one of the most startling financial tragedies

that the world has ever seen had its commencement. The banking house of

Jay Cooke & Co., the foremost financial organization of America, doing

business at Number 114 South Third Street in Philadelphia, and with

branches in New York, Washington, and London, closed its doors. Those

who know anything about the financial crises of the United States know

well the significance of the panic which followed. It is spoken of in

all histories as the panic of 1873, and the widespread ruin and disaster

which followed was practically unprecedented in American history.

At this time Cowperwood, once more a broker--ostensibly a broker's

agent--was doing business in South Third Street, and representing

Wingate & Co. on 'change. During the six months which had elapsed

since he had emerged from the Eastern Penitentiary he had been quietly

resuming financial, if not social, relations with those who had known

him before.

Furthermore, Wingate & Co. were prospering, and had been for some time,

a fact which redounded to his credit with those who knew. Ostensibly he

lived with his wife in a small house on North Twenty-first Street. In

reality he occupied a bachelor apartment on North Fifteenth Street, to

which Aileen occasionally repaired. The difference between himself and

his wife had now become a matter of common knowledge in the family, and,

although there were some faint efforts made to smooth the matter over,

no good resulted. The difficulties of the past two years had so inured

his parents to expect the untoward and exceptional that, astonishing as

this was, it did not shock them so much as it would have years before.

They were too much frightened by life to quarrel with its weird

developments. They could only hope and pray for the best.

The Butler family, on the other hand, what there was of it, had become

indifferent to Aileen's conduct. She was ignored by her brothers and

Norah, who now knew all; and her mother was so taken up with religious

devotions and brooding contemplation of her loss that she was not as

active in her observation of Aileen's life as she might have been.

Besides, Cowperwood and his mistress were more circumspect in their

conduct than they had ever been before. Their movements were more

carefully guarded, though the result was the same. Cowperwood was

thinking of the West--of reaching some slight local standing here in

Philadelphia, and then, with perhaps one hundred thousand dollars in

capital, removing to the boundless prairies of which he had heard

so much--Chicago, Fargo, Duluth, Sioux City, places then heralded in

Philadelphia and the East as coming centers of great life--and taking

Aileen with him. Although the problem of marriage with her was

insoluble unless Mrs. Cowperwood should formally agree to give him up--a

possibility which was not manifest at this time, neither he nor Aileen

were deterred by that thought. They were going to build a future

together--or so they thought, marriage or no marriage. The only thing

which Cowperwood could see to do was to take Aileen away with him, and

to trust to time and absence to modify his wife's point of view.

This particular panic, which was destined to mark a notable change

in Cowperwood's career, was one of those peculiar things which

spring naturally out of the optimism of the American people and

the irrepressible progress of the country. It was the result, to

be accurate, of the prestige and ambition of Jay Cooke, whose early

training and subsequent success had all been acquired in Philadelphia,

and who had since become the foremost financial figure of his day.

It would be useless to attempt to trace here the rise of this man to

distinction; it need only be said that by suggestions which he made and

methods which he devised the Union government, in its darkest hours, was

able to raise the money wherewith to continue the struggle against

the South. After the Civil War this man, who had built up a tremendous

banking business in Philadelphia, with great branches in New York and

Washington, was at a loss for some time for some significant thing to

do, some constructive work which would be worthy of his genius. The war

was over; the only thing which remained was the finances of peace, and

the greatest things in American financial enterprise were those related

to the construction of transcontinental railway lines. The Union

Pacific, authorized in 1860, was already building; the Northern Pacific

and the Southern Pacific were already dreams in various pioneer minds.

The great thing was to connect the Atlantic and the Pacific by steel,

to bind up the territorially perfected and newly solidified Union, or

to enter upon some vast project of mining, of which gold and silver were

the most important. Actually railway-building was the most significant

of all, and railroad stocks were far and away the most valuable and

important on every exchange in America. Here in Philadelphia, New York

Central, Rock Island, Wabash, Central Pacific, St. Paul, Hannibal & St.

Joseph, Union Pacific, and Ohio & Mississippi were freely traded in.

There were men who were getting rich and famous out of handling these

things; and such towering figures as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould,

Daniel Drew, James Fish, and others in the East, and Fair, Crocker, W.

R. Hearst, and Collis P. Huntington, in the West, were already raising

their heads like vast mountains in connection with these enterprises.

Among those who dreamed most ardently on this score was Jay Cooke, who

without the wolfish cunning of a Gould or the practical knowledge of a

Vanderbilt, was ambitious to thread the northern reaches of America with

a band of steel which should be a permanent memorial to his name.

The project which fascinated him most was one that related to the

development of the territory then lying almost unexplored between the

extreme western shore of Lake Superior, where Duluth now stands,

and that portion of the Pacific Ocean into which the Columbia River

empties--the extreme northern one-third of the United States. Here, if a

railroad were built, would spring up great cities and prosperous towns.

There were, it was suspected, mines of various metals in the region of

the Rockies which this railroad would traverse, and untold wealth to be

reaped from the fertile corn and wheat lands. Products brought only so

far east as Duluth could then be shipped to the Atlantic, via the Great

Lakes and the Erie Canal, at a greatly reduced cost. It was a vision of

empire, not unlike the Panama Canal project of the same period, and one

that bade fair apparently to be as useful to humanity. It had aroused

the interest and enthusiasm of Cooke. Because of the fact that the

government had made a grant of vast areas of land on either side of the

proposed track to the corporation that should seriously undertake it

and complete it within a reasonable number of years, and because of the

opportunity it gave him of remaining a distinguished public figure, he

had eventually shouldered the project. It was open to many objections

and criticisms; but the genius which had been sufficient to finance

the Civil War was considered sufficient to finance the Northern Pacific

Railroad. Cooke undertook it with the idea of being able to put the

merits of the proposition before the people direct--not through the

agency of any great financial corporation--and of selling to the

butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker the stock or shares that

he wished to dispose of.

It was a brilliant chance. His genius had worked out the sale of great

government loans during the Civil War to the people direct in this

fashion. Why not Northern Pacific certificates? For several years he

conducted a pyrotechnic campaign, surveying the territory in question,

organizing great railway-construction corps, building hundreds of miles

of track under most trying conditions, and selling great blocks of his

stock, on which interest of a certain percentage was guaranteed. If it

had not been that he knew little of railroad-building, personally, and

that the project was so vast that it could not well be encompassed by

one man, even so great a man it might have proved successful, as under

subsequent management it did. However, hard times, the war between

France and Germany, which tied up European capital for the time being

and made it indifferent to American projects, envy, calumny, a certain

percentage of mismanagement, all conspired to wreck it. On September 18,

1873, at twelve-fifteen noon, Jay Cooke & Co. failed for approximately

eight million dollars and the Northern Pacific for all that had been

invested in it--some fifty million dollars more.

One can imagine what the result was--the most important financier and

the most distinguished railway enterprise collapsing at one and the same

time. "A financial thunderclap in a clear sky," said the Philadelphia

Press. "No one could have been more surprised," said the Philadelphia

Inquirer, "if snow had fallen amid the sunshine of a summer noon." The

public, which by Cooke's previous tremendous success had been lulled

into believing him invincible, could not understand it. It was beyond

belief. Jay Cooke fail? Impossible, or anything connected with him.

Nevertheless, he had failed; and the New York Stock Exchange, after

witnessing a number of crashes immediately afterward, closed for eight

days. The Lake Shore Railroad failed to pay a call-loan of one million

seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and the Union Trust Company,

allied to the Vanderbilt interests, closed its doors after withstanding

a prolonged run. The National Trust Company of New York had eight

hundred thousand dollars of government securities in its vaults, but not

a dollar could be borrowed upon them; and it suspended. Suspicion was

universal, rumor affected every one.

In Philadelphia, when the news reached the stock exchange, it came first

in the form of a brief despatch addressed to the stock board from the

New York Stock Exchange--"Rumor on street of failure of Jay Cooke & Co.

Answer." It was not believed, and so not replied to. Nothing was

thought of it. The world of brokers paid scarcely any attention to

it. Cowperwood, who had followed the fortunes of Jay Cooke & Co. with

considerable suspicion of its president's brilliant theory of vending

his wares direct to the people--was perhaps the only one who had

suspicions. He had once written a brilliant criticism to some inquirer,

in which he had said that no enterprise of such magnitude as the

Northern Pacific had ever before been entirely dependent upon one house,

or rather upon one man, and that he did not like it. "I am not sure that

the lands through which the road runs are so unparalleled in climate,

soil, timber, minerals, etc., as Mr. Cooke and his friends would have

us believe. Neither do I think that the road can at present, or for many

years to come, earn the interest which its great issues of stock call

for. There is great danger and risk there." So when the notice was

posted, he looked at it, wondering what the effect would be if by any

chance Jay Cooke & Co. should fail.

He was not long in wonder. A second despatch posted on 'change read:

"New York, September 18th. Jay Cooke & Co. have suspended."

Cowperwood could not believe it. He was beside himself with the thought

of a great opportunity. In company with every other broker, he hurried

into Third Street and up to Number 114, where the famous old banking

house was located, in order to be sure. Despite his natural dignity and

reserve, he did not hesitate to run. If this were true, a great hour had

struck. There would be wide-spread panic and disaster. There would be a

terrific slump in prices of all stocks. He must be in the thick of it.

Wingate must be on hand, and his two brothers. He must tell them how to

sell and when and what to buy. His great hour had come!

Chapter LIX

The banking house of Jay Cooke & Co., in spite of its tremendous

significance as a banking and promoting concern, was a most

unpretentious affair, four stories and a half in height of gray stone

and red brick. It had never been deemed a handsome or comfortable

banking house. Cowperwood had been there often. Wharf-rats as long as

the forearm of a man crept up the culverted channels of Dock Street

to run through the apartments at will. Scores of clerks worked under

gas-jets, where light and air were not any too abundant, keeping track

of the firm's vast accounts. It was next door to the Girard National

Bank, where Cowperwood's friend Davison still flourished, and where the

principal financial business of the street converged. As Cowperwood ran

he met his brother Edward, who was coming to the stock exchange with

some word for him from Wingate.

"Run and get Wingate and Joe," he said. "There's something big on this

afternoon. Jay Cooke has failed."

Edward waited for no other word, but hurried off as directed.

Cowperwood reached Cooke & Co. among the earliest. To his utter

astonishment, the solid brown-oak doors, with which he was familiar,

were shut, and a notice posted on them, which he quickly read, ran:

September 18, 1873.

To the Public--

We regret to be obliged to announce that, owing to

unexpected demands on us, our firm has been obliged to

suspend payment. In a few days we will be able to present a

statement to our creditors. Until which time we must ask

their patient consideration. We believe our assets to be

largely in excess of our liabilities.

Jay Cooke & Co.

A magnificent gleam of triumph sprang into Cowperwood's eye. In company

with many others he turned and ran back toward the exchange, while a

reporter, who had come for information knocked at the massive doors

of the banking house, and was told by a porter, who peered out of a

diamond-shaped aperture, that Jay Cooke had gone home for the day and

was not to be seen.

"Now," thought Cowperwood, to whom this panic spelled opportunity, not

ruin, "I'll get my innings. I'll go short of this--of everything."

Before, when the panic following the Chicago fire had occurred, he had

been long--had been compelled to stay long of many things in order to

protect himself. To-day he had nothing to speak of--perhaps a paltry

seventy-five thousand dollars which he had managed to scrape together.

Thank God! he had only the reputation of Wingate's old house to lose, if

he lost, which was nothing. With it as a trading agency behind him--with

it as an excuse for his presence, his right to buy and sell--he had

everything to gain. Where many men were thinking of ruin, he was

thinking of success. He would have Wingate and his two brothers under

him to execute his orders exactly. He could pick up a fourth and a fifth

man if necessary. He would give them orders to sell--everything--ten,

fifteen, twenty, thirty points off, if necessary, in order to trap the

unwary, depress the market, frighten the fearsome who would think he was

too daring; and then he would buy, buy, buy, below these figures as much

as possible, in order to cover his sales and reap a profit.

His instinct told him how widespread and enduring this panic would be.

The Northern Pacific was a hundred-million-dollar venture. It involved

the savings of hundreds of thousands of people--small bankers,

tradesmen, preachers, lawyers, doctors, widows, institutions all over

the land, and all resting on the faith and security of Jay Cooke. Once,

not unlike the Chicago fire map, Cowperwood had seen a grand prospectus

and map of the location of the Northern Pacific land-grant which Cooke

had controlled, showing a vast stretch or belt of territory extending

from Duluth--"The Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas," as Proctor Knott,

speaking in the House of Representatives, had sarcastically called

it--through the Rockies and the headwaters of the Missouri to the

Pacific Ocean. He had seen how Cooke had ostensibly managed to get

control of this government grant, containing millions upon millions of

acres and extending fourteen hundred miles in length; but it was only a

vision of empire. There might be silver and gold and copper mines there.

The land was usable--would some day be usable. But what of it now? It

would do to fire the imaginations of fools with--nothing more. It was

inaccessible, and would remain so for years to come. No doubt thousands

had subscribed to build this road; but, too, thousands would now fail

if it had failed. Now the crash had come. The grief and the rage of the

public would be intense. For days and days and weeks and months, normal

confidence and courage would be gone. This was his hour. This was his

great moment. Like a wolf prowling under glittering, bitter stars in

the night, he was looking down into the humble folds of simple men and

seeing what their ignorance and their unsophistication would cost them.

He hurried back to the exchange, the very same room in which only two

years before he had fought his losing fight, and, finding that his

partner and his brother had not yet come, began to sell everything in

sight. Pandemonium had broken loose. Boys and men were fairly tearing in

from all sections with orders from panic-struck brokers to sell, sell,

sell, and later with orders to buy; the various trading-posts were

reeling, swirling masses of brokers and their agents. Outside in the

street in front of Jay Cooke & Co., Clark & Co., the Girard National

Bank, and other institutions, immense crowds were beginning to form.

They were hurrying here to learn the trouble, to withdraw their

deposits, to protect their interests generally. A policeman arrested a

boy for calling out the failure of Jay Cooke & Co., but nevertheless the

news of the great disaster was spreading like wild-fire.

Among these panic-struck men Cowperwood was perfectly calm, deadly cold,

the same Cowperwood who had pegged solemnly at his ten chairs each day

in prison, who had baited his traps for rats, and worked in the little

garden allotted him in utter silence and loneliness. Now he was vigorous

and energetic. He had been just sufficiently about this exchange floor

once more to have made his personality impressive and distinguished.

He forced his way into the center of swirling crowds of men already

shouting themselves hoarse, offering whatever was being offered in

quantities which were astonishing, and at prices which allured the few

who were anxious to make money out of the tumbling prices to buy.

New York Central had been standing at 104 7/8 when the failure was

announced; Rhode Island at 108 7/8; Western Union at 92 1/2; Wabash at

70 1/4; Panama at 117 3/8; Central Pacific at 99 5/8; St. Paul at 51;

Hannibal & St. Joseph at 48; Northwestern at 63; Union Pacific at 26

3/4; Ohio and Mississippi at 38 3/4. Cowperwood's house had scarcely any

of the stocks on hand. They were not carrying them for any customers,

and yet he sold, sold, sold, to whoever would take, at prices which he

felt sure would inspire them.

"Five thousand of New York Central at ninety-nine, ninety-eight,

ninety-seven, ninety-six, ninety-five, ninety-four, ninety-three,

ninety-two, ninety-one, ninety, eighty-nine," you might have heard him

call; and when his sales were not sufficiently brisk he would turn to

something else--Rock Island, Panama, Central Pacific, Western Union,

Northwestern, Union Pacific. He saw his brother and Wingate hurrying in,

and stopped in his work long enough to instruct them. "Sell everything

you can," he cautioned them quietly, "at fifteen points off if you have

to--no lower than that now--and buy all you can below it. Ed, you see

if you cannot buy up some local street-railways at fifteen off. Joe, you

stay near me and buy when I tell you."

The secretary of the board appeared on his little platform.

"E. W. Clark & Company," he announced, at one-thirty, "have just closed

their doors."

"Tighe & Company," he called at one-forty-five, "announce that they are

compelled to suspend."

"The First National Bank of Philadelphia," he called, at two o'clock,

"begs to state that it cannot at present meet its obligations."

After each announcement, always, as in the past, when the gong had

compelled silence, the crowd broke into an ominous "Aw, aw, aw."

"Tighe & Company," thought Cowperwood, for a single second, when he

heard it. "There's an end of him." And then he returned to his task.

When the time for closing came, his coat torn, his collar twisted

loose, his necktie ripped, his hat lost, he emerged sane, quiet,

steady-mannered.

"Well, Ed," he inquired, meeting his brother, "how'd you make out?" The

latter was equally torn, scratched, exhausted.

"Christ," he replied, tugging at his sleeves, "I never saw such a place

as this. They almost tore my clothes off."

"Buy any local street-railways?"

"About five thousand shares."

"We'd better go down to Green's," Frank observed, referring to the lobby

of the principal hotel. "We're not through yet. There'll be more trading

there."

He led the way to find Wingate and his brother Joe, and together they

were off, figuring up some of the larger phases of their purchases and

sales as they went.

And, as he predicted, the excitement did not end with the coming of the

night. The crowd lingered in front of Jay Cooke & Co.'s on Third

Street and in front of other institutions, waiting apparently for some

development which would be favorable to them. For the initiated the

center of debate and agitation was Green's Hotel, where on the evening

of the eighteenth the lobby and corridors were crowded with bankers,

brokers, and speculators. The stock exchange had practically adjourned

to that hotel en masse. What of the morrow? Who would be the next to

fail? From whence would money be forthcoming? These were the topics from

each mind and upon each tongue. From New York was coming momentarily

more news of disaster. Over there banks and trust companies were falling

like trees in a hurricane. Cowperwood in his perambulations, seeing what

he could see and hearing what he could hear, reaching understandings

which were against the rules of the exchange, but which were

nevertheless in accord with what every other person was doing, saw

about him men known to him as agents of Mollenhauer and Simpson, and

congratulated himself that he would have something to collect from them

before the week was over. He might not own a street-railway, but he

would have the means to. He learned from hearsay, and information which

had been received from New York and elsewhere, that things were as bad

as they could be, and that there was no hope for those who expected a

speedy return of normal conditions. No thought of retiring for the night

entered until the last man was gone. It was then practically morning.

The next day was Friday, and suggested many ominous things. Would it be

another Black Friday? Cowperwood was at his office before the street

was fairly awake. He figured out his program for the day to a nicety,

feeling strangely different from the way he had felt two years before

when the conditions were not dissimilar. Yesterday, in spite of the

sudden onslaught, he had made one hundred and fifty thousand dollars,

and he expected to make as much, if not more, to-day. There was no

telling what he could make, he thought, if he could only keep his small

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